You can imagine our excitement when our newly planted baby shrub popped out its first flower. In this case it's one of Pammy's shrubs, her Tibouchina 'Groovy Baby' which we planted only a few weeks ago. But wait on, what are those holes in the flower? And who's that wriggling around on the anthers?
Of course, it's the purple flower munching monster, disguised as a caterpillar. He/she probably is also responsible for the nifty holes in the petals. These are caused by the purple flower monster drilling down into the flower bud for a feed, before the whole thing unfurls. Tatty swiss-cheese flowers and purple monsters couldn't put a dampener on our excitement. The little tibouchina is roaring along, sending out new leaves. The weather right now is as autumnally perfect as you could possibly wish for here in Sydney, and as the plant obviously wants to do some growing, I treated it to a gourmet feed. As for any other purple monsters wanting to attack our baby, be warned, we're on the lookout for you guys!
